SAGEBRUSH AS A STATEMENT

The diamond hitch is a top-of-the-line knot, especially useful in cowboy, mining, or logging country – or, as I apply it, the desert foothills of Washington state found east of the Cascade mountains. Forefront in my related set of poems is the unspoken recognition of diamond hitch as marriage, with its implied images of diamond ring and getting hitched. In the background, also unvoiced, is the diamond symbol of the clear and enduring heart – further extended to intense spiritual quest, as The Diamond Sutra (Vajrachchedika in Sanskrit) demonstrates, found also in the Buddhist linkage of diamond to Dharma. In addition to serving as an emblem for the open range of the American Far West, sagebrush, moreover, suggests wisdom, spice, even the Burning Bush of Moses – the profound influence desert has upheld for prophets and mystics over the millennia.